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LTOIIT OUT OF DARKNESS;'' 



J Jisfoiirsc, 



Preached on the Sabbath M(^rning sucoeedtno the 

Assassination of President Lin(;oln, 

April IGth, 18G5, 



PIEHKEPONT STREET BAPTIST ClHJRCIl, 




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-^i OF CO\G^^ 



BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



^OF WAS\"NG^ 



Bv Hev. J. B. THOMAS, Pastor. 



N E W Y R K : 

R. C. ROOT, ANrnONY & CO., STATIOXERS, 21 NASSAU STREKT. 
1865. 



L.457 



SERMON. 



And some of them said, Could not this man which opened the eyes of the blind, have 
caused that even this man should not have died I—Joan XI. 37. 

Last Friday evening we rejoiced together, that witli tlie 
completion of a four years' cycle of our national life, tlic 
Government triumphantly placed its bruised heel upon the 
crushed head of the serpent. With the restoration of our flag 
to Sumter, the last blow was struck, welding into complete- 
ness this strained and battered link that bound together the 
past and future of an unbroken history. But with that blow 
the stalwart arm, laboring so long for us in the smoke and 
fury of the furnace, is palsied — the faithful artizan of our 
prosperity wakes to his task no more. 

The night has been long and dark — the tempest fierce — 
foaming breakers upon every hand — but just as through the 
cloud rifts the gray morning dawns, and we discern the out- 
lines of the peaceful harbor — even while we are decorating 
every rope and spar with emblems of rejoicing — and every 
face is radiant with hope — the pallor of death is over all — 
the pilot is stricken at the wheel. 

When, yesterday morning, we wakened to hear the mes- 
sage, "the President is dying," and a little later, "the Presi- 
dent is dead," not only as a people did we shudder beneath 
the overhanging wing of the death angel, but the shadow 
crept into every household, so that as on that fearful nioi-n- 
ing in Egypt, there seemed to he "not a hous(^ where there 
was not one dead." 

For it is not simply the official head of the nation, tli(^ wise 
counsellor, the incorruptible inagistrattMvho has fallen; we 



mourn the self-sacrificing philanthropist, the undissemhling 
patriot — the faithful and unchanging friend. We mourn as 
followers for a battletried leader — as children for a heloved 
father. 

He had gone with us like Moses to the borders of the land 
of hope. Through the sea and the desert, sharing the bur- 
dens, sympathizing with the discouragements, meekly re- 
ceiving the unjust reproaches of the people, yet amid all un- 
daunted in courage, unswerving in integrity, unwavering in 
assurance of final success. And now at the last we had 
reached the river, and the blue hills and waving fields be- 
yond were beckoning to rest and peace : we may go over to 
enjoy, but he only ascended into Nebo to behold the inviting 
scene and rejoice in the anticipated blessings of the people 
he had loved. We know how his soul longed for that better 
future. No doubt oftentimes he besought " Let me go over, 
I pray thee, and see the good land that is beyond Jordan, 
that goodly mountain and Lebanon ;" but the decree was in- 
exorable, '' Thou shalt not go over this Jordan." With sad 
steps and drooping hearts, as Israel left behind the grave of 
their trusted leader, do we go on alone into the hoped for 
hours of peace. 

So suddenly at the bright noon-tide of our rejoicing has 
this dark cloud shot over the sky, that as yet horror strick- 
en, " beneath the shadow of this great affliction the soul sits 
dumb." Oppressed with the remembrance of the fierce con- 
vulsions and narrow deliverances of the recent past, the re- 
velation of the untamed and unexampled malignity of the 
spirit that still lurks in secret places, the apprehension of 
unimagined yet possible consequences of evil to flow from the 
fearful event before us, we grope tremblingly amid the gloom 
for some ray of light. So marvelously and uniformly in later 
days has God seemed to work for us, and so essential did the 
preservation of this life seem to the consummation of the tri- 
umph of liberty, which he has led us to anticipate, that we 
are ready to exclaim with Mary's friends, " Could not this 
man which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that 
even this man should not have died ?" Could he not have 



caused that our comrade in coiiHict lui^lit be participant 
with us in victory — that the hand which had recorded in 
successive proclamations the progress, might also issue the 
joyful annunciation of the final triumph of liberty — that the 
heart which had groaned over a rent and bleeding, might 
rejoice again over a restored and happy country ? 

So the sisters were distracted with conflicting emotions, 
trembling between doubt and confidence, hope and appre- 
hension, while through weary hour's lite waned and the Mas- 
ter came not. With what diffid(>nt, yet reproachful, remon- 
strance did they exclaim, "Lord, if thou hadst been here 
my brother had not died." Had he then forgotten, or neo;- 
lected them, and were their reproaches just ? Let their own 
surprised and gladdened hearts welcoming a brother restor- 
ed — let millions of unfaltering pilgrims in the dark valley — 
millions of bereaved yet hopeful believers in Christ the Life, 
respond. Not to deepen sorrow into despair, but to supplant 
it by a better hope, to be diffused through all the earth, was 
his purpose of love. For out of that sorrowful enigma of his 
dealings with them — out of that blank page of utter hope- 
lessness, he caused to dawn into unquenchable brightness 
those words which are the heritage of this death stricken 
world — which are set as the seal of God on every believer's 
tombstone throughout the earth, '' I am the resurrection and 
the life." 

Can not we then trust that the same faithful and loving 
God will, for us, cause to be unfolded out of this rough and 
prickly bud of affliction, some rare and precious flower of 
truth and hope, to Ijreathe its fragrance among the nations? 
Amid complicated relations to present and maturing events, 
infinite possibilities and contingencies for the future, it is not 
for us to prophesy how this new element in the problem of 
our redemption is to affect its solution. We can, neverthe- 
less study some of its relations to the past, its work upon the 
brief day since the event has occurred, and trace God's hand 
therein. 

I. Mark the Occasion. — We ask, "could not God have 
spared him ?" Doubtless He, and He only. For who had 



• 6 

spared him through the vicissitudes and labors of four years? 
Who spared him when before his first inauguration thousands 
of reckless traitors lifted their hands in a solemn oath against 
his life, when a price was set upon his head to tempt some 
greedy villain to his assassination ? Who spared him when, 
in the early hours of his administration, the streets and of- 
fices of Washington swarmed with creeping vipers, and hid- 
den dens of treason sheltered plotting conspirators ? Who 
spared him when his private room was open to every appli-' 
cant, and he rode unarmed and almost unattended through 
unfrequented roads ? Who spared him, when already crush- 
ed under the burden of official anxiety and care, he never- 
theless turned night into day, that he might listen to the 
wants and redress the private grievances of the humblest of 
the people ? Who spared him amid the contagion of hospi- 
tals and the actual encroachments of disease ? Who, at his 
second inauguration, sent sudden weakness into the heai't of 
the conspirator, sworn and prepared then to accomplish his 
fiendish purpose ? Who spared him when, later, amid the 
thunders of the battlefield, he watched and waited for vic- 
tory, and at last rode into the very " belly of hell " at Eich- 
mond? Not sentinels or fortifications, not human wisdom 
or precaution, but God alone, disenchanted disease, unnerved 
the assassin's arm, and bid his ''angels encamp roundabout" 
his servant. 

And who in tim hour of peril could have spared him ? 
Multitudes of strong arms would gladly have been thrown 
around him for his protection — multitudes of brawny breasts, 
already battle scarred, would gladly have been thrust before 
him to receive the fatal bullet The people who loved him 
were in crowds before him, his wife and companions close 
about him — yet a gentle touch of the finger, which a child's 
hand might have accomplished — a slender report that scarce- 
ly breathed louder than a whisper — and the little bullet, so 
long slumbering in the assassin's pocket, marked for its des- 
tination — sped on its appointed way — no arm to stay it — no 
sentinel to warn — no faltering of nerve or wavering of aim 
to lead it from its course. That touch of the finger shocked 



the land like an earthquake — that soft-voiced pistol shot echo- 
ed louder than the thunders of all our battlefields through 
every household — that quivering brain, lacerated by the 
fatal ball, sent responsive thrills throughout the sympathiz- 
ing heart of the nation. But the severed life no human art 
could restore — the effectual work wrought, neither courage 
nor strength nor wisdom nor affection could undo. 

That shot, so long averted and delayed, but permitted at 
this appointed hour, was but the whispered reverberation of 
that roar of cannonry at Sumter that woke the nation just 
four years before ; the one a signal calling to labor, the other 
to repose. On that first day the flag, folded sadly and in 
silence, vanished from its peaceful occupancy of the place, 
and in his hand as Commander-in-Chief, began that long and 
weary march to pierce and girdle the land again with its au- 
thority. This day the appointed task was completed — " the 
warfare was accomplished " — the flag, followed by the ap- 
plause of thousands in every State and Territory, had com- 
pleted its circuit of victory, and once more "repossessed" its 
appointed place, streaming triumphantly over the hardly 
contested spot, where its wanderings began and were ap- 
pointed to cease. 

And now as closes this day of joy, as this special trust, a 
dishonored and dismounted flag to be restored, has been ex- 
ecuted, and the nation has received from his hands the be- 
loved emblem of its life in all its former spotlessness and 
supremacy, the weary pilgrim lays aside his staff, the magis- 
trate gives up his fasces, the trusted and beloved citizen 
ascends in the very presence of the people he has so well 
served. 

11. C(^NSiDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. — Our danger as a 
people has been, that emotion might take the place of judg- 
ment — that under the swaying impulses of mere popular 
feeling the sword of justice might be accelerated in its de- 
scent by the spirit of vengeance, or the temperate words of 
mercy wax into warmer expressions, equivalent to approval. 
In the beginning of our war the popular spirit tended to the 
mere animal ferocity, which desired for revenge to crush and 



annihilate the offenders. The atrocity of the ciroumstances 
attending the inauguration of the war, the continually de- 
veloping evidences of long premeditated treason, more and 
more horrid barbarities practiced by our antagonists, all served 
to heighten and intensify the feeling of relentless and un- 
sparing desire for their extinction. At that time the executive 
seemed to the people perpetually too mild and too slow. The 
surges of popular indignation dashed and clamored about him, 
but did not move him from his course. The spirit which was 
in him, breathed like the softer land breeze, upon the waves 
lashed into foam by the fierce winds of the ocean. He " bore 
all things, believed all things, hoped all things, endured all 
things." Thus tempering zeal with discretion, judgment 
with mercy, he tamed and bridled the impetuous passions of 
the people, and guided them in the course of wisdom and 
charity. 

But four years of war had buried in their crimson tide 
those earlier incidents, and obscured the just indignation at 
first aroused. Eyes had become dim with weeping, hearts 
stunned with repeated blows of anguish, so that the outlines 
of the great crime were beginning to be confused, and the 
sensibilities less keen to its atrocity. When, therefore, at 
this juncture, the nation found itself no longer struggling on 
even terms against a haughty and persistent foe,, but stand- 
ing triumphant over a vanquished and prostrate form, whose 
bruises and helplessness plead eloquently lor mercy, it was 
not surprising that the far swung pendulum of immoderate 
hate should vibrate to the opposite extreme of unconsidered 
lenity. 

In this new alembic of tenderness, the solid substratum of 
crime was about to be dissolved away, and the floating atoms 
of courage, military genius, social attractiveness, to ciystal- 
ize into form, for inspection. Justice was not only to be 
blinded, but her scales to be dropped and her sword to be 
sheathed. 

At this hour flashed before the eyes of the people, within 
the rim of that, narrow box, a living tableau, epitomizing 
once more the object, and spirit and motive of the rebellion 



— its wanton destructivenoss, its sneai<ing cowardice, its un- 
provoked malignity condensed into narrow compass, that the 
nation and the world may see the self evidencing seal of the 
indictment it has traced against itself in letters of blood, and 
doubt or forget its crime no more. 

There sits the feeble man whose shoulders have been bent 
beneath the burdens of the nation through four years of care 
and toil — his face pallid with sickness and long continued 
anxiety, nevertheless reflects the smile of the people, to whose 
exultant joy he cannot be insensible : his lips have scarcely 
lost the words of kindness and hopeful anticipation concern- 
ing the apostate enemies of the nation, just uttered in cabinet 
council : even now doubtless, he is meditating earnestly what 
new proposition he may make, consistently with the safety 
and honor of the government, for their easier and less humil- 
iating return to allegiance. He is the worthy and faithful 
type, as he is the official representative of the government. 

And now embodied treason comes, creeping stealthily from 
behind, aided and protected by the appliances which cow- 
ardice has devised and in'secret prepared, flourishing weapons 
in either hand, to attack and defend against the unarmed 
and unsuspecting. 

Contrast the victim and the assassin — the one calm and 
benevolent in expression, his features mirroring perpetually 
his own words, " charity toward all, malice toward none " — 
the other scowling with fiendish hate : the one feeble, un- 
armed, unwarned — the other prepared with mortal weapons, 
practiced in aim, swift and noiseless in accomplishing the 
deliberately planned approach. The one clad in the mail of 
conscious integrity, dispensing with all guards and sentinels; 
tolerating the approach even of implacable enemies — the 
other with ungrateful eagerness availing himself of the nol^le 
confidence of unsuspicious innocence, the better to consum- 
mate the fiendish murder. 

There is no parley — no waiting for exchange of glances — 
not even a serpent's warning — but only the whizzing bullet, 
and then the boastful glittering of the dagger, the shout of 
glutted vengeance, and the swift escape. 



10 



The work was brief in time, narrow in space — but its con- 
sequences are immeasurable. That dagger's point lifted the 
veil — that jarring pistol shot broke the spell that was being 
woven over the land. The nation now, bereft of a father, 
remembers the multitudes of fatherless throughout its bor- 
ders, and refuses to grasp in friendship the bloody hands 
that made them so. Powerless to restore the life we so 
much prized, we recognize the value of every life and the 
solemn trust God has committed to government, to guaranty 
its securitv and avenge its wanton destruction. Convinced 
by this testimony, we are ready now to believe that intelli- 
gently premeditated treason is a crime, too radical in its na- 
ture to be worn out by time, crushed by conquest, won by 
clemency, or disarmed by confiding forgetfulness. 

Vengeance is God's, to be executed by him alone. Indi- 
viduals may not, government cannot, be its administrator ; 
but justice, which is equally his, he has committed to gov- 
ernment as a sacred trust. It is not the executive of popu- 
lar passion, but " God's minister that beareth not the sword 
in vain," deriving from him the sanction of its laws, and in 
his name and by his authority enforcing their penalties. 
The confirmation of this Divine origin and vicegerency of 
government is the justification of the war just waged to vic- 
tory ; without it our every battlefield is an unhallowed acel- 
dama, and every scaftbld throughout the land a place of pub- 
lic murder. In the discharge of this solemn trust, held for 
the nation and for humanity, causelessly to forgive the guilty 
is infidelity as gross as without charge to punish the inno- 
cent. Wo be to that government which forsakes the Su- 
'preme Lawgiver, and turns from the eternal principles of 
retribution he has wrought into the very fibres of the uni- 
verse, to consult the fluctuating impulses of the multitude. 

In this calamity, therefore, and the results it has already 
produced in public sentiment, we hear the voice of God not 
inciting to the bloodthirsty vengeance of the mob, but say- 
ino-, " Be still, and know that I atn God " — " Do not, by un- 
timely and unwarranted appeals for promiscuous absolution 
of crime, confuse the judgment, or unnerve the arm of my 



11 

representative, who is appointed to ' execute wrath upon him 
that doeth evil,' as well as to protect the innocent." 

The chastened and awe-stricken people have heard the 
voice, and withdrawn their hands from the sacred ark of 
the law. 

III. Behold the Successor.— That marvellous fidelity 
with which the features of particular transgressions have re- 
appeared in their peculiar punishments during this war, is 
the exemplification not of "poetic justice," as is sometimes 
said, but of historic jnatice. According to God's law "the 
tree" developed by his hand, "yields fruit after its kind 
whose seed is in itself." Jacob, the deceiver, was deceived by 
Laban and by his own sons ; Lot voluntarily choosing the 
impure atmosphere of Sodom, was stripped of wife and 
daughters by it, pursued by its contagion even to the moun- 
tains, and left a desolate wanderer there. David, in adul- 
tery and murder, sowed the seed of the bloody harvest reap- 
ed in the fate of Tamar and Amnon and Absalom. Herod 
ascribing to himself divine omnipotence, was prostrated and 
consumed by the feeblest and most loathsome creatures of 
God's hand. 

Who shall deny the work of the same Supreme Wisdom 
in " repaying every drop drawn by the lash with another 
drawn by the sword" — in making the " mothers of those 
who have made women childless," themselves " childless 
among women "—in " fastening the other extremity of the 
chain, which held the ancle of the oppressed, round the neck 
of the oppressor " — in causing the streets of their proudest 
city to wave with the rank harvest of desolation they had 
predicted for others ; growing undisturbed till trodden down 
by the returning feet of those who, once fugitives from the 
bloodhound and the scourge, now returned with bayonet 
and shout of victory to possess the land of their captivity. 
Verily "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether." 

What shall be said then of this suicidal act, which stilled 
the throbbings of a heart filled with sincere charity toward 



12 

even the vilest of the enemy — in which mercy struggled con- 
stantly with judgment : whose only weakness, if it be called 
weakness, was too great confidence in the sincerity of pro- 
fessed repentance, too great hopefulness of the reformation 
of the base — too tender sensibilities, for the unmoved and re- 
lentless execution of the sterner mandates of the law. 

What shall be said of -the violent removal of such a one, 
to make way for another, who, having personally felt the 
fangs of the serpent, cannot doubt their keenness or power, 
and having been pursued long and remorselessly, cannot be 
deceived as to the inveterate and unalterable spirit of the 
reptile, which for thirty years has been gathering strength 
and venom for the blow it meditated on the bosom where it 
had nestled — a man who, in his first pithy utterance — "The 
duties are mine, the consequences are God's" — seems to 
evince a purpose to thrust aside all ofiicious interference, to 
cut oft' all useless parley, and with inllexible sternness, to 
" administer justice without mercy, to those who have shown 
no mercy." 

The hand of the assassin has indeed struck the blow, itut 
the brain of the rebellion long since conceived, and the heart 
of the rebellion authorized and stimulated to it. If now 
Haman again expiates the malignity he has hoped to gratify, 
upon his own gallows — if, striking down the hand that holds 
a pardon, he has chosen one that holds the fjital sentence — 
shall we not still say " the judgments of the Lord are true 
and righteous altogether." 

IV. But while we thus catch rays of light from Clod's 
throne through this enveloping cloud, we cannot wholly es- 
cape from beneath its dark borders. God is above the cloud 
and there all is light, but we dwell among shadows. 

Who shall comprehend the dumb sorrow of the bruised 
race to whom, emerging from the darkness of the prison 
house he had opened, he so gladly from his high place 
stretched forth the hand of friendly welcome ? The Ked Sea 
and the wilderness are -forgotten, while they turn now only 
to Nebo, and mourn their prophet and deliverer buried 



IS 

there. By camp fire, and on picket rounds to day also, 
many an unbidden tear will be brushed from the bronzed 
face, and many a heart, unnerved by the terrors of the bat- 
tlefield, will melt into womanly tenderness at the mention 
of his name. Neighbors at Springfield, who knew him long- 
est and best, and loved him most, will consecrate henceforth 
in memory, the old home where once he was accustomed to 
welcome them, and where they hoped yet again to receive 
him, crowned with the affectionate gratitude of a delivered 
nation, but whither he comes again in life no more. 

And his beloved State, Illinois — as railway arteries and 
telegraphic nerves throb through her borders with the bur- 
den of this sad intelligence, the plough stops in the furrow, 
the mill wheel rests, the busy voices of commerce sink into 
soft whispers and labored sighs, while the very flower har- 
vests of her prairies seem to droop their heads and wither 
under the death bearing blast that sweeps over the land. 

This last page of her hitherto peaceful history is sprinkled 
and blurred with a bitter rain of tears. Beside every battle 
cemetery her spirit mourns over the relics of her children 
slain, ''and will not be comforted because they are not." 
The tombstones of her two favored sons, chosen by the 
nation as its opposing standard bearers in the contest of 
rival principles for supremacy, mark, one the entrance to, 
the other the exit from this four years' field of blood. Com- 
petitors in life, they breathed a common spirit in death, 
and from the gates of the tomb they grasp hands across the 
intervening gap of warfare, the one exhorting to steadfast- 
ness, longing for and prophesying success — the other, 
" faithful unto death," confirming the prophesy and rejoic- 
ing in the anticipated victory. 

Thus bereaved of her choicest and bravest, she weeps to- 
day beside the bier, chief mourner among the sisterhood of 
States. 

But there weep also others whose grief no words can 
measure. The widow and the fatherless, who have becoiiie 
the possessors of the nation's sympathy and protection by so 
dear a purchase. Cabinet ofiicers, strong men and self- 



14 

reliant, yet made tractal)le by the strength of sincerity, and 
tender hearted by the contagion of gentleness, bowed with 
childlike sobbing as about a father's corpse. The citizens of 
Washington, " both high and low, rich and poor together," 
for he was the friend and benefactor of all alike. And round 
about all, the afflicted nation, filling the land from Maine 
to California, with faces all turned toward the shrouded 
capital, lift up together their dirge of sorrow. The black 
cloud presses down the exultant flag and wreaths it upon the 
staff; it hangs in funereal wreaths on wall and dome, and in 
the door-ways of the people, and under its shadow these 
words alone resound — " Said I not unto thee that if 

THOU WOULDEST BELIEVE THOU SHOULDEST SEE THE GlORY 

OF God?" 



B S 12 



